I can't believe it's not clutter

Mrs O and I are having a bit of a furniture realignment chez nous.  These things, as they are wont to, evolve organically.  Firstly, I decided to build a new bookshelf from planks of mdf and bricks.  I know it's a student cliché, but it's miles cheaper than buying a decent bookshelf and it looks da biznizz.  Once I'd done this, she suggested I might like to move our desk into the alcove behind the telly in the other corner of the room.  This meant dismantling another bookshelf and moving that.  This I did last night.  We'll give it a couple of days to bed in.  It's a little difficult to judge the aesthetic impact of the change just yet because the front room is covered in, as yet, unused house bricks and planks.  I'll take a position on the matter over the weekend.

The one unhelpful conclusion I was able to draw from the week's manoeuvres was that we have way too much stuff, just oceans and oceans of sheight.  I have something of a hoarding gene.  Luckily I noticed this as a boy and, not wishing to turn into a bearded friendless nutter in later life, I determined to keep it in check.  Generally, I do a good job of this, but it's always helpful to have a quick stocktake every few years.  Mrs O isn't very zen when it comes to chucking away old newspapers and wrapping paper either, so we're an incendiary combination.  I told her in no uncertain terms last evening, we have to jettison some ballast or we're not going to cut in polite society much longer.

We live, just the two of us, in a reasonably large house.  And that's part of the problem.  It's the first house we've owned after five years of flat dwelling.  Living in a flat concentrates the mind.  No garden, no shed, no cellar, no loft - either you're in charge or your belongings are.  When we moved to a slightly smaller flat about four years ago, we gave 13 stuffed carrier bags full of books to the local Oxfam.  But books are still the main problem.  They're everywhere at home: on work surfaces, all over the floor, in the two toilets, on the hob, the sofa, the telly, you name it.  If we had a dog, he'd be covered in books, the poor blighter.  But not having books all over the house is a symbol of twattery, and I'm loathe to be accused of that.

I'll have to throw away the sofa instead.  Squatting supposed to be very good for one anyway.  Could someone tell the wife?